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NPR reports
Passengers on a United Express flight from Chicago to Louisville, Ky., were horrified when a man was forcibly removed--violently wrenched from his seat and physically dragged down the aisle. [...] Videos of the scene have prompted calls to boycott United Airlines.
[...] The Chicago Department of Aviation [...] says the actions of the security officers were "not condoned by the Department" and that one individual has been placed on leave pending a review.
[...] Passengers had already boarded on Sunday evening [April 10] at O'Hare International Airport when United asked for volunteers to take another flight the next day to make room for four United staff members who needed seats.
The airline offered $400 and a free hotel, passenger Audra D. Bridges told the Louisville Courier-Journal. When no one volunteered, the offer was doubled to $800. When there were still no bites, the airline selected four passengers to leave the flight--including the man in the video and his wife.
"They told him he had been selected randomly to be taken off the flight", Bridges said.
[...] The man said he was a doctor and that he "needed to work at the hospital the next day", passenger Jayse D. Anspach said.
[...] Both Bridges and Anspach posted videos of three security officers, who appear to be wearing the uniforms of Chicago aviation police, wrenching the man out of his seat, prompting wails. His face appeared to strike an armrest. Then they dragged his limp body down the aisle.
Footage shows the man was bleeding from the mouth as they dragged him away. His glasses were askew and his shirt was riding up over his belly.
"It looked like he was knocked out, because he went limp and quiet and they dragged him out of the plane like a rag doll", Anspach wrote.
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @04:28PM (3 children)
This must be reinforced: the flight was NOT overbooked. It was fully booked, the customers were boarded and seated. At that point, four United crew came along wanting to board, claiming to need to get to the destination city for a flight the next day. Either they were making it up or it was some really shitty logistics on United's part -- if they really had crew that they needed to shuttle forward, they should have known that well before the passengers were boarded and could have kept four seats clear by bumping passengers.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 12 2017, @05:38PM (2 children)
Parsing words doesn't change the facts. United sold more tickets than they were able to accomdate. United knew, or should have known, days in advance, that their staff would require 4 seats on that flight, and those 4 seats should NOT HAVE BEEN SOLD!!
This is, indeed, yet another case of overbooking their flights. Ticket sold, seat not available at takeoff, OVERBOOKED!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @06:53PM
That's not "parsing words", that's calling bullshit on misreporting. United is trying to play the "overbooked" card and a lot of the media is repeating it, but if it were true then they would have turned away passengers before letting them on the plane. The passengers were boarded. They were in their seats. If the flight was overbooked, just enough people showed up for that not to matter. Until the four United staff showed up and demanded seats.
BINGO! Now you're getting it.
The fact that their staff showed up at the last second and demanded accommodation means that either they were full of sh!t about their need to board or United has really sh!t logistics. Either way, they had no good excuse to force paying passengers to remove themselves, never mind the assault.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @07:52PM
It's an important distinction here. There are rules about what they can and can't do and being denied boarding due to being overbooked is legally very different from what happened. My guess is that UA is going to be hit with a sizable lawsuit due to how they held this. They'll be on the hook for his injuries as well as any losses from his practice incurred due to their violating the terms of the contract they wrote.